You're the next contestant

We recently spent four days and three nights at the beautiful Ramada Plaza in Casper Wyoming.

(I'm trying to sound like Rod Roddy from the Price is Right, but I don't think that is how it is coming across.)

Casper has a mall, the mall has a Target. I'm easy to please these days. If you spend six years living in the middle of nowhere or the middle of not close to anything much, Target would make you excited too. So we shopped at Target and bought some little trinkets from the one dollar spot near the front door. My kids love that. I love that it is far away from the real toys so they aren't tempted to talk me into spending more than $1.

Our hotel pretended to be nice, but you know it was all show. The sheets were questionable and the hair ball in the shower was not mine. The worst part... no microwave or little fridge, and no continental breakfast. I know I might start to sound like a diva, but... I HAVE STANDARDS!

But we had fun. We shopped, we swam, watched our basketball team, played checkers in the lobby, and watched a lot of Sponge Bob (thank you Sponge Bob Marathon!) House Keeping came the first day, but we hadn't used all our towels yet and we were watching Home Alone and didn't want to be interrupted. ("You dirty scoundrel" Faith's favorite line from Home Alone) so we sent them away. Silly us, because they never came back.

It's hard to have two little kids eat out every single meal for four days. Sometimes you just want cereal or a swipe of peanut butter on your finger. So the last night at the hotel (and it was very late, we had just won a basketball game) we bought Kids Cuisine from Walmart (yes, I actually had to go in that store even though Target was across the street) And please don't comment on the fact that Kid Cuisine has more sodium and calories than the fast food I fed my kids all week. It was a lot cheaper than our dinner at Applebees and it came with corn. A real vegetable.

I took our dinner to the gift shop and warmed it up in the microwave there. While I was down there I mentioned to the desk clerks that the heat in our room was blowing air but it wasn't hot. In fact the room was getting colder. And that housekeeping never came. No thanks, we didn't want to change rooms because is was almost 11 pm and we were leaving in the morning. They gave us coupons for free breakfast in the restaurant for our trouble. Sweet.

I made it back to our room with our hot TV dinners and we ate on the floor of the hotel room while watching Home Alone, again. (The hotel room whose teeny-tiny garbages hadn't been emptied for three days, no new towel or plastic cups- remember: no housekeeping) But we ate the warmed up processed food and then placed the containers next to the full garbages.

Finally we all went to sleep: Eddie in one bed with a child, me in the other bed with the other child. Off in dream land I was. Until, a child, who will remain unnamed to protect his/her identity, peed the bed! The bed that I was sleeping on while cuddling that child. Which meant that child also peed me! The unnamed child was woken up and we both changed our clothes. That child went to the other bed with Eddie and I pulled the sheets off and put them in a pile next to the pile of garbage, took a towel from the wet pile in the bathroom and did my best to clean the mattress. Then I laid at the edge of the bed on my side (so I wouldn't be touching the wetness), wrapped up in one of my kids' blankets so stay warm since the heat wasn't working and went back to sleep. All was well again. We were going to head home the next morning where the cat and our laundry would greet us. But we'd soon have real towels and our own beds and we could leave this beautiful/dumpy hotel behind.

About 8:30 the next morning we were awakened by a knock at the door.

It was housekeeping.